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Long-Horizon Work and Subagents

Anda Bot is designed for complex goals that need continuity, not only one answer. Long-horizon work preserves the objective, checks progress, compacts context, and continues when needed.

Use /goal​

/goal or /loop marks a request as a long-horizon goal:

/goal Finish this release prep: run tests, check the changelog, verify install script docs, and summarize risk.

When the main agent is idle, the goal checker evaluates whether the current result is complete. If more work is needed, it can generate a follow-up for the main agent. When context grows too long, Anda compacts the current state and opens a linked conversation to continue the same session.

Use /side​

/side or /btw puts a request into an independent side task. It is useful for:

  • Researching a risk.
  • Asking another perspective to review the current conclusion.
  • Gathering background without interrupting the main conversation.
/side Check whether this dependency upgrade affects macOS arm64 users.

Use /skill​

Runtime skills live in ~/.anda/skills. When you want a specific workflow to handle a request:

/skill git-assistant Draft a Conventional Commit message from the current diff.

What Subagents Do​

Subagents can take specialized roles such as research, implementation, review, and supervision. The main session keeps the objective and final judgment; subagents handle focused work.

This structure is useful for:

  • Research that requires reading many files or references.
  • Code tasks where implementation and review should be separated.
  • Goals that need repeated checks of whether the work is actually done.
  • Work that needs external tools without losing the main thread.

Tools and Local Workspace​

Anda's base tools include memory, note, shell, file read/write, todo, skills, cron, and subagents. File and shell tools work in ~/.anda/workspace by default.

When a task involves the current repository or external tools, state the objective, acceptance criteria, and boundaries clearly.

/goal Fix the docs build in the current repository. Do not edit Rust code. Done means pnpm --dir docsite build passes.

When Not to Use /goal​

Simple Q&A, one-off explanations, and short command lookups do not need /goal. Send a normal message. Save /goal for work that genuinely needs continuation, verification, and follow-up.